<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>The Love I Sell You by sunshinexprincess</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22413526">The Love I Sell You</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinexprincess/pseuds/sunshinexprincess'>sunshinexprincess</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Wound With Circumstance [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Kinda, Slow Burn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 15:01:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,348</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22413526</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshinexprincess/pseuds/sunshinexprincess</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“How was I to know you were telling me the truth?” She responded just as flatly, beginning to tug again on the collar of the dress. “I couldn’t have trusted you then.”</p><p>“Are you saying you trust me now?”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kylo Ren/Rey</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Wound With Circumstance [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1606390</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>39</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Love I Sell You</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Rey was not in the mood to talk to him today.</p><p>She half-ran down the hallway from the main conference room, yanking desperately at the stiff collar of the dress Leia had let her borrow for the event. She pulled the heavy earrings from her lobes, still throbbing from being pierced hours before, having half a mind to crush them with the Force. She hated these things. Sit and recite speeches from the holo-reader to strangers on planets literal light-years away, with emotion Leia always reminded her before the call began. If there was one thing she hated the most about this entire war, it was politics. And somehow she’d landed herself right in the middle of all of it. The Jedi who could save them all.</p><p>Yeah right.</p><p>No, she was not in the mood to talk to him today, which, of course, was why she felt the Bond tug at her gut the moment she had hung her head over her desk and begun to grip the table so hard she thought that she might break it.</p><p>As if today could get any worse.</p><p>“I don’t want to talk to you,” she spit, turning her head sharply to where she could feel him standing.</p><p>“It’s not like I’m the only one who controls this,” he responded easily, sweeping across the room to take a seat in the armchair near the window. He was wearing his cloak; she could tell by the soft swish swish the fabric made on the ground with each step he took.</p><p>She crackled with annoyance, knowing he could read both this as well as her confusion as easily as one of his bedside novels. Had she truly reached out for him, even as she begged the Force for him not to show up?</p><p>“What’s wrong, Sola,” he said more gently, and she found herself relaxing at his words as quick as she had been annoyed by them. The man was becoming a friend; he understood, even more than Leia now, the impossible stress of being a symbol of war.</p><p>“I’m just tired of being propaganda,” she shook her head, taking out hairpins as she spoke. “And not even able to follow up on the promises we give them at that.” She slammed her palm into the table in a sudden bout of anger. “I feel like an advertisement, or a cantina. Hi I’m Rey, please place an order for a galaxy-saving feat and we’ll deliver it to you shortly. Hi I’m Rey, yes I have a lightsaber, yes I’ve flown the Millennium Falcon, yes I met Han Solo, yes I can use the Force, yes I’ve seen Kylo Ren in the flesh he’s sitting in my <em>bedroom</em> and he’s been doing it for MONTHS!” She threw the earrings she still had clenched in her other fist across the room, not waiting to see where they landed.</p><p>“My mother cares for nothing but politics,” he muttered bitterly, staring hard out the window. “I think I recall telling you something of the sort.”</p><p>Rey hung her head again, her hair falling in loose curls over her face.</p><p>“How was I to know you were telling me the truth?” She responded just as flatly, beginning to tug again on the collar of the dress. “I couldn’t have trusted you then.”</p><p>“Are you saying you trust me now?”</p><p>She paused, looked at him for the first time that day, studying the black of his robes and the remnants of her scar on his face. He looked no less intimidating now than the day she had woken up strapped to a chair with his face dangerously, murderously, close to hers. And yet.</p><p>“More than I did. You know that.”</p><p>He motioned with amusement at the dress, eyes full of a rare warmth. “So much as to let me help you with that collar?”</p><p>She sighed, half grateful and half wary. “If you swear not to kill me doing so.”</p><p>She shivered involuntarily as he came up behind her and swept her hair languidly out of the way, as close, if not closer, as they had been two weeks ago when he began teaching her the stars. He chuckled lowly, and she pushed against his mind sharply. He simply laughed again.</p><p>“That would hardly be fair, I think,” he murmured, undoing the dress with an ease he could feel she envied. “Even I could not stoop so low as to take my enemy unawares.” He stepped back, a satisfied smirk on his face as she let out a disappointed breath at the loss of his closeness.</p><p>He retook his seat in the armchair, staring out the window at the tops of the trees swaying softly in the afternoon wind.</p><p>She took a deep breath, tucking the collar in behind the fabric at her shoulder. He would pay for that.</p><p>“You know that if you come with me your life wouldn’t have to be like this,” he said suddenly, head turned slightly in her direction. “No more meetings, propaganda. You could be free.”</p><p>There was a hint of loneliness, of desperation in his tone, as if he was indirectly begging her to be with him not just for her power now, but for her self.</p><p>“But at what cost?” She murmured, walking to stand behind him, hands resting on the chair on either side of his shoulders, resisting the urge to instead sit on the ground in front of him and hide behind his legs like a child. “Everything I love, I would have to destroy.”</p><p>“Love is a pointless sentiment,” he answered, reaching around to take her hand in one of his black gloved ones.</p><p>Irony.</p><p>“And yet you still believe in it.” She was looking at their joined hands, the contrast of the black and white and its meaning almost casing her to drown in grief.</p><p>He rubbed gentle circles on her thumb; she melted begrudgingly into his touch. “I used to,” he murmured dazedly, and she sensed that his mind was no longer fully here in her room. “The Light proved me wrong, and the Dark showed me the truth.”</p><p>“You can’t mean that,” she pressed, siting down on the arm of the chair, their entwined fingers falling to his knee.</p><p>“Neither can you.” <em>One day you will see. And then you will understand.</em></p><p>
  <em>Balance.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Disappointment.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>No.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Naive child.</em>
</p><p>“Stop.”</p><p>He didn’t answer, just turned his head away, his flingers still clenching hers as if they were the last thing he would ever touch.</p><p>“Come home,” she suddenly spoke up, moving to kneel in front of him and taking both of his hands in hers. “Come home and you can let it all go, let it all die. Kill it, if you have to. Remember?” She was looking pleadingly up at him, and he knew that she at least partly meant what she said. But the girl had just been through an extensive and evidently painful meeting- most likely about him and his so-called corruption of the galaxy, if he had to guess- and was therefore in no real place to be making such requests.</p><p>Still, he thought. It was nice to have someone even halfway want you.</p><p>“So can you,” he answered, his mouth twisting with emotion. “You can let it die too. You know that you want to, and you know that I can make it happen. You need only ask.”</p><p>She sighed inaudibly, slumping to the floor, forehead pressed hard against his shins. What was the point of this, of showing him compassion, when all he would ever do was use it against her?</p><p>Stop denying what you are.</p><p>She fell to the blackness of exhaustion before she could come up with an answer.<br/>______________</p><p>When she came to, slumped awkwardly on the floor against the chair, he was gone.</p><p>A single black glove was in his place.</p><p>She slipped it experimentally onto her hand, almost cracking a smile at how ridiculously big it was on her fingers. She didn’t notice the tears until they hit the black leather with a dull <em>pat.</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>1. hey look! I will still go down with this ship.<br/>2. story ideas always welcome. . .I feel burnout coming on.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>